Movies of volume rendered medical images that give an impression of the anatomy, become more and more important, because this type of visualization comes close to reality.
In cardiac imaging there is a desire to be able to visualize the coronary arteries of the heart in an acquired cardiac image dataset, for example to detect a stenosis in the coronary arteries or to visualize the coronary arteries to a surgeon before surgery is performed. A cardiac image dataset may be obtained by performing a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan of a patient's heart. Once the scan is recorded it may for instance be visualized as a volume rendering, after applying proper classification and segmentation. By choosing different orientations of the camera of the volume rendered image, a sequence of images may be derived that form a movie.
Cardiologists welcome volume rendered images of the heart with coronaries, as this type of visualization resembles closely to what they will see, when they subsequently perform an operation on the patient. The natural way to inspect the coronaries is to view them one by one in the direction of the blood flow, starting at the aorta, moving downwards.
Currently, in order to define a fly-path in the medical image dataset the user selects certain so-called key images. These key images are images on the fly-path of the camera. Once the user has selected all the key images he likes, a fly-path is calculated by interpolating the geometrical properties of the key images; these are, origin in space, orientation in space and the zoom factor. Apart from these manually selected key images there also exist automatic fly-paths, e.g. simple mathematical paths, such as e.g. a circle around the object. Subsequently, a movie comprised of images along the fly-path may be created and presented to the user.
A problem with current fly-path movies is that the structure of interest may be difficult to identify or other structures may obstruct the view to the structure of interest. Hence, an apparatus, method, computer-readable medium and use allowing for increased flexibility would be advantageous.